The Little Mermaid
by Poison Fairy
Summary: A pink-haired mermaid wishes to be part of the world on land. A young prince with all his family but his older brother dead. An epic adventure of love and magic as the whispers of the ocean and land call out to them.
1. Tadaah—eh?

The waves rolled lazily against one another with seagulls and porpoises skimming along its border that met the grey-blue sky

The waves rolled lazily against one another with seagulls and porpoises skimming along its border that met the grey-blue sky. It was a day after a great rain and fog had drifted above the waves. From the midst of the fog came a great ship crashing through the waves.

"I'll tell you a tale of the bottomless blue, "chorused the sailors on the ship as they hauled the vast net containing the captured fish, "And it's hey to the starboard, heave ho." A few sailors on the foremast pulled on the ropes to cast the main sail. "Look out, lad, a mermaid be waitin' for you. In mysterious fathoms below!" they sang as the sail moved over the bowspirit with the carving of a raccoon dog with its fangs bared on it. A handsome young man of eighteen gazed excitedly out at the sea, his raven-black bangs blowing wildly in front of his pale face with his friend's dog, Akamaru, at his side.

"Isn't this great? The salty air of the sea, the wind caressing your face? This is an amazing day to be at sea!" exclaimed he. The white and tan dog barked happily beside him. An old man with black hair and white eyes coughed over the side of the boat and into the sea. His face was a flushed green as he exaggerated,

" Oh, yes...a wonderful day." he quickly turned to the side of the boat again and sicked. A man the same age as the one with the dog picked up a crate with great ease in one strong arm and said,

"A fine strong wind and a following sea. King Jiraiya must be happy." he said. His painted red triangles on his cheeks proved immune to the salty water that slopped onto the deck every now and then. The black-haired man looked over to him. His black eyes twinkling with curiosity.

"Kiba, who's King Jiraiya?" he asked. Another young man with yellow hair and horizontal stripes on his cheek came by carry a small net of fish.

"You're kidding!" he yelled with a kiddish scratchy voice, regardless that Kiba and the other man were only a few feet away, "He's the ruler of the merpeople, tabeyo! Thought every good sailor knew about him!" Kiba pushed the yellow-haired man as soon as the wave hit the boat, causing the loud man to fall over; the pink salmon fell from the net and began its waterless adventure.

"Jeez, Naruto. You shouldn't yell in people's ears." mumbled Kiba, he continued his way across the deck with the crate. The old man began walking over and rolled his white eyes.

"Merpeople." he muttered in disgust. "Sasuke," addressed Hyuuga Hiashi, "pay no attention to that nautical nonsense." Naruto scrambled around the floor of the deck and finally caught the fish. He picked himself off the slimy wet floor and yelled once again with the fish in his hands,

"But it isn't nonsense, it's the truth! I'm telling you, down in the depths of the ocean, _they liive_! Tabeyo!" The slimy pink fish slipped from his hands, smacked him in the face and slipped off the boat and into the big blue. The rest of the crew continued the chorus,

"Heave, ho. Heave, ho. In mysterious fathoms below." The fish sighed with relief and swam away. Human-like fish creatures and fish gathered towards the golden castle of shining coral where you could hear instruments in chorus tuning. They filed into a concert hall within and a fanfare ensued.

"Ahem, his royal highness. King Jiraiya!" announced a seahorse with an abnormally low voice. An old merman with long white hair put into a low-set pony-tail with a single red stripe running from the corners of both his eyes to behind his bangs. Jiraiya sat in a grand, gleaming shell being pulled by two porpoises. He entered dramatically to a crowd of loud cheering. "And presenting the head of conductors, the ever-popular, bushy-browed, Rock Lee!" A green turtle with a red stripe across his handsomely polished shell, orange legs, and thick black eyebrows swung into the room with a mild cheering as he stood in a pink conch-shell with two fish pulling him. The elderly merman pulled up beside the crab and smiled,

"I'm really looking forward to this performance, Lee." The green turtle beamed.

"Oh, your majesty, this _will_ be the finest concert I've ever conducted. Your daughters—they will the most spectacular and beautiful mermaids in all !"

"Yes! And especially my little Sakura-chan! My beautiful, beautiful, young Sakura-chan." said the giddy old merman. The fish pulling Rock Lee's shell swam suddenly swerved and turned the shell upside down, making Lee scramble along its edge for balance. He clawed his way back to the seat.

"Yes, she has the most beautiful singing voice," Lee added. He turned away from his Majesty and muttered, "If only she'd show up for rehearsals every once and a while..." The turtle was towed away toward the marble podium. The light around the concert hall was blocked out by a thick, slide-able wall of shells sewn together, pulled by a few whales. He jumped gracefully from the pulled shell and alighted onto the marble podium. He looked over the tall stand with his bulging black eyes and coughed dramatically. He pulled out a thin, long, and glamorously creamy-white shell and tapped it on the stand: he began to direct the orchestra. The bubbles that were the curtains pulled apart to reveal a dark stage. Six young merwomen swept the stage, smiling.

"Ah, we're the daughters of Jiraiya." they sang as their colorful tails swam about the stage, beautiful giant sea shells began to appear on the coral stage. "Great father who's named us well."

The spoken-of old man grinned and raised his fists and cheered for them as if they were at a seahorse racing tournament. The girls looked at him annoyed. "Tayuya!" sang a short-red haired woman with a scarlet tail and shell-top.

"Hinata!" chorused the woman with short black hair, grey-white eyes, a cream coloured-shell bra and a dark-blue tail.

"Tenten, ahhh!" a mermaid with brown eyes, black-brown hair in pig-tailed buns, a lavender top, and a black tail sang.

"Anko ahh...!" yelled a young woman with short dark-purple hair in a wild pony-tail. She had an orange tail and black shell bra.

"Shizune, laaaaa!" a woman with short and manageable black hair with a black and white shell top and grey tail burst out of the quiet demure.

"Matsuri!" a bubbly girl with dorkily cut brown hair. The girl had on a rather bland blue tail and a boring blue top. The other mermaids frowned at her at the girl's lack of rhyming.

At each mention of their names the crowd burst into cheers and fireworks of colourful and strained seaweed streaming through the air like confetti.

In chorus they sang, "And then there is the youngest in her musical debut. Our seventh little sister we're presenting her to you! To sing a song Rock Lee wrote, her voice will strike you down with awe!" They swam gracefully to a giant cherry-pink closed shell surrounded by bubbles and pearls of all sort of colours.

"She's our sister Sa—, Shizune and Anko formed the hiragana 'sa',

"Ku," Tenten formed 'ku'. "Ra!" Hinata and Tayuya formed 'ra'.

"Sakuraaaaaaaaaaaa—!" Matsuri bellowed like a mix between a jazz and opera singer, as she did this, Matsuri was given the task of pressing the lever to open up the large shell but to their dismay the spoken-of girl was not there! The pieces of their audience whooped and cheered, thinking that it was all just an act. King Jiraiya fumed and his face grew from his usual peachy-yellow, to sunburn-pink, to red.

The old man thundered angrily as if there were any other way to thunder, "_SAKURA!"_


	2. Dragon Ball Me!

A young woman of sixteen slowly swam out of the cavern and into the large open space. Her pink hair the color of spring cherry-blossoms wavered in the water around the tops of her shoulders, her green eyes twinkling brightly with excitement and anticipation like of a child. A young boy's voice yelled from a distance behind her, "Onee-chan, wait for me!" She turned around and gave a happy yet frustrated sigh,

"Hurry up, Konohamaru!" A small, rotund fish the size of a milk jug came swimming up to her, hurrying to catch up. His main scale colour was an off-whitish yellow, like old pages in an ancient book with a dark blue tail, dorsal fins, and fins.

"You know...I can't swim...that fast!" he panted as the young fish swam to her side. She ignored his comment and said more to herself than him,

"Look, there it is! Isn't it awesome?!" she exclaimed. Her pale hand gesturing toward the sight before them. The area the two were in was shaped like a child's bowl made of clay: shaped with no certainty of being a sphere or cube or anything three-dimensional shape for the matter, a lumpy floor and wide, yet inwardly curved open ceiling. The sunlight beamed through the water casting a glowing green-blue light onto the ruins of a grand sunken ship. The light stopping to then create long ribbons of wavering shadows against the masts and shrouds. Daggers of whale ribs protruded from the heavy sand ground and remnants of decayed ships gave the ground an endless and ominous look. Konohamaru squirmed by her side and began to back up.

"Yeah, sure... it's great! Now let's get outta here!" he whined. She sighed again.

"Aw, come on. You're not afraid of a little sunken boat, are you?" Sakura sneered. He grinned sheepishly and scratched his head with his right fin.

"Oh, me? No, no, no...it just looks kind of... dark and dense there," he said, sweat floating off his scales, "Yeah, and I think I'm coming down with something too!" He unconvincingly coughed. The mermaid stared at him and sweat-dropped underwater, somehow.

"Okay...well, I'm going inside, you can watch here for...sharks or enemy mernin." said Sakura. She left the fat fish and swam down to the sunken ship, and slipped through the porthole.

"Okay, you can go and I'll stay to—what? Sharks and mernin? Onee-chan!" He swam after her and into the porthole. The only dilemma was that only his head could fit through. "Onee-chan! _Heelpp meeee_!" he whined.

"I'm not your sister..." Sakura grumbled as she went to Konohamaru's aid.

"Sakura-chan," whispered Konohamaru as he suspiciously looked around with his wide black eyes, " do you _really _think that there might be sharks or mernin around here?" Because the plump fish was directly within the frame of the porthole, the two friends failed to notice a great serpent and two men pass by.

"Don't be such a plankton!" she chided him as she pulled on his front fins. "If you want to be in the Atlantic Guard then you'll just have to face your fears and confront them!" Konohamaru gulp and nodded. He back up along the wall of the interior of the ship until he felt an oddly light-weight object brush his tail fin. He turned around to gaze in the face of the skull of a gigantic dog.

Konohamaru gasped an "_AHHHhhhh_!" for several seconds. He whipped around like the little wannabe-Chicken-of-the-Sea he was and frantically dashed away in a mix of zig-zagging and spiraling trails of bubbles. In his freight he had crashed into a pillar no more than three feet away from him: causing a cave-in of wood and rusty-metal. Konohamaru was spun out of control like a driver in Antarctica near that one place where the penguins, polar bears, and leopard seals live in peace and snack on fish tempura, discussing of what they had done the evening before and when Tommy will buy Suzie that one pink pearl in that one place near that ice-burg shaped like a blob and whatever happened to that crazy emperor penguin that danced. _Anyway_...

Sakura was examining a portrait of a human girl dressed in a beautiful golden gown and a sand-coloured hairy creature clad in a suit-jacket and blouse. She had only ever heard of beasts like that in fairy-tales. She gazed into the creature's yellow-green eyes and was lost into its sadness, as if it were gazing at her soul. She was broken from the trance by the spinning form of Konohamaru. She yelped and was pushed back; she noticed the support beams and floor-boards collapse where she had just been treading. "Ko-Konohamaru! You saved me!" the mermaid exclaimed, gratitude and shock swirling in her green eyes. Konohamaru black eyes rolled around in their sockets for a second then focused. A smug grin planted itself across his face and he slid his right pectoral fin through his blue mane of rays.

"_Well_... that _is _the honorable thing to do for a fish that's gonna become the best of the best in the Atlantic Guard!" he boasted. The pink-haired woman giggled then turned around to ignore him. The remainder of the room she as in was small and green in the casting light from above. She swam through the large hole in the floorboards above. She breached the main deck and looked around. All was barren except for the layers of dust hovering above the wooden floor; her eye caught a glint in the beams of sunlight.

_"OH, EM, GEE!"_She gasped and her green eyes grew wider. She swam gracefully over to the metal object and gently picked it up. "Whoa! Konohamaru! Have you ever seen anything so wonderful in your entire life?!" The fish swam over to her right side and eyed it down. His expression lit up into awe for Sakura's sake.

"Wow! That's awesome! But...erm, what is it, exactly?" he asked her. She bought his sudden mood and replied with a shrug,

"I don't know. But I bet Scarecrow will!" she unzipped a pocket in the black holster wrapped around her thigh-ish area of her tail and put the fork in. Two shadows passed by outside, unseen by the two friends, their forms enlarged and morphed by the rays of sunlight cast into the waters around them. Konohamaru whipped his head around with a look of fear written clearly on his face.

"Don't y-you mean Kakashi? He hates it when you call him that y'know. But, hey! What was that just now? Did you hear something?" he said, his breathing was shallow. She ignored him and picked up an odd-looking book of some sort.

"Hmmn, I wonder what this beuk is. It reads backwards compared to the other ones we've found!" She swam forward and reached for another item. Her tail brushed by a beam of wood and her holster un-strapped itself and fell off. "Urgh, not again..."

"Onee-chan...!" the boy whimpered. He could feel an ominous threat crawling up his spine, in a non-physical way.

Sakura sighed and closed her glass-green eyes, "_Relax, _Konohamaru. Nothing is going to happen. Everyday is like the one before, remember what Hinata-chan said." She opened her eyes to find two bodies charging towards them. Her eyes contracted. Konohamaru noticed her change in behavior and turned around.

"_AHHHhhh_! _Run!Run_!" he yelped. The mermaid seemed frozen to the spot so he tried to pull on her arm with his flimsy fins. At his cool touch she came out of her trance and backed away to pick up her holster. The two beings charged in, straight through the glass wall and an explosion of dust and other debris blocked each others' view of the opposing party. She succeeded in getting back her holster and put the 'beuk' in quickly. She sensed the enemies coming after them. Konohamaru somehow gathered up some courage and threw several sharpened scales at the enemy. They were all deflected and he could hear the _ping _as they hit the ground. A third suddenly appeared, she sensed the air's chakra flow, and the two fled to the upper floor. The third enemy crashed into the wall the two had been cornered to moments before and suddenly disappeared. The dashed across the floor when the floor a few feet ahead suddenly exploded as well. The two figures emerged. A glint of light reflected from one's eyes as right hand glowed a lightning-blue.

_"Mernin, huh? This could be a tough one..."_she thought to herself. The other ninja's arms were elongated and seemingly bone-less or serpent-like. The mernin dashed at them. _"No, not even with Konohamaru around would I have a chance!"_She grabbed the fish by his fat body and swam away. The enemy behind them, destroying great fractions of the ship around them as they continued to give chase. They took another stair to a higher floor and swam towards the port-hole like mad. Konohamaru dove through but was stuck midway. The girl struggled to push him through: he popped out and she slipped through as well. The mernin behind gave no mind to the port-hole and blasted their way through.

Konohamaru and Sakura swam towards one of the exiting caves, past the mast. The sun-light was blocked by clouds and the boy crashed into the crow's-nest at the top of the mast. In a daze he slowly drifted down. A great serpent's agape jaws narrowly missing him. Sakura gasped and trailed after him. The serpent was attached to the man's arm and swiveled around to catch Konohamaru. He continued to fall and close to the ground was a fallen anchor laid vertically from the ground. Sakura sped down and moved her upper body through the anchor's circular hole at the top and caught Konohamaru. He awoke at her touch and she quickly withdrew with the fish cradled in her arms as the long serpent sped towards them. There wasn't enough time. The two backed away in horror into a slate of stone.

The serpent suddenly recoiled and shrunk back into the man's hand. A young man with glasses and silver-hair set into a pony-tail followed his leader. He was of fair-skin and his tail was black with a blended white on the fins and top. The attacker had long black hair that drifted like silk within that ocean's waters. His skin complexion was comparable with a skeleton's and his cat-like eyes stared into her green ones. His tail was black at the top, blending into tan, then into black again. "Forgive us." the older one said in perhaps his late twenties or early thirties. "We had mistaken you for an enemy. We were given information that out opposing group would be here and so we thought you them." His velvety voice made small bubbles as he spoke. They were both quite fit looking as the sun's contorted rays water touched their figures in the green-blue water.

"Well, you should've spied for a while longer to figure out if we were them or not!" Sakura retorted. Konohamaru nodded vigorously behind her. _"Wait—what?!"_ he thought.

"Our apologies." said the silver-haired one of age twenty-three. "You see, we had thought your friend was one of the living Dragon Balls, which are nine items of great power. Each Dragon Ball is represented as a different animal and the current one Orochimaru-sama and I are searching for is a Fish." Orochimaru nodded.

"We'll be leaving now, Kabuto." He looked to the girl and fish, "Forgive us, for trouble you. Farewell." The two disappeared in spirals of dust and water. They floated in silence until the dust had settled into the sand once more.

"Well, that was interesting."


	3. Gimme Your Ohhhs and Ahhhhhs!

Waves waved lazily against the lonesome island complete with a tall rock and a dead tree as birds cried their songs as the afternoon set in. The sky was blue and clouds were in rare sight as Kakashi hummed the theme song to Sailor Mew Mew. "Fighting evil by moonlight, winning love by day-light, never running from a real fight! She's a Tokyo, Sailor Mew Mew..." Kakashi was of the stranger types of avian, for you see, the feathers on his head were swept oddly to his left and he wore a dark blue band covering his left eye like an eye-patch. He was also one of the few, if not the only, birds that were attracted to non-birds.

"Bakka—kah cauh-cough!" a bird cried as it flew over him. He was a tan-feathered bird with the lungs of smoker.

"Stop fantasizing about cat-girls! They don't exist!" another teased. She had creepy, blood-red eyes, a black head, and a white body with red feet.

"Aw, shut up you mangy love-birds. Go eat some dumplings—WHOA! Oi! Mermaid and co.! On the port bow!" He removed his eyes from the upside-down adult book to see Sakura and Konohamaru before him. "Sakura! How're you doing my sweet blossom?" he asked. He set the book down by his feet. Ariel opened her mouth, about to say something but her eyes widened in remembering something. She pulled her water-heavy bag out of the water and plopped it in the sand for him.

"Kakashi, look what we found!" she told him. Konohamaru finally found the courage to speak,

"Yeah! We were in this sunken ship, a-and it was _really _creepy..." The seagull walked forward from his rocky perch and down to Sakura and the fish. "Yeah, whate—VER! Whoa!" He fell forward and dangled from the ledge by a taut rope tangled around his left foot. "_What _is _this_?!" he wondered very aloud. He craned up his neck and took the rope in his feathered hands and tugged hard on it. The mermaid and fish looked at each other and shrugged. With another tug, the rope suddenly felt very light. Kakashi stayed aloft in the air until a great shadow loomed over him: an anchor came sliding over the rock edge and straight for him! The bird squawked and was struck by the object.

_Da-thunk _the noise made as he hit the ground followed by the rusting anchor with an even lower and louder noise. Sakura put her left hand over Konohamaru's eyes and they both winced at the sound. "Are you okay...Kakashi?" she asked him. He wriggled out from beneath the heavy thing with a cartoony _pop_ and nodded vigorously.

"Yeah, yeah! Fine, fine! So what do we have here?" he exclaimed as if being crushed by an anchor was a daily part of his life. With that said he stuck his beaked head inside her pink-cloth bag. Some clinking noises were made as he shuffled around through the shells until he found it. "Whoa-ho-HO! you have hit the mother-load, Sakura my little pupil. You may call me Kakashi-_sensei _from here on out in fact!" he boasted to her. he had brought his head out from within the bag: the treasured object was in his hands behind his back.

"What? What is it?!" she gasped. She clapped her hands together in anticipation.

"_This_..." he stated in a tone of suspense, from a camera-point-of-view it circled around him, faster and faster as his spotlight grew brighter and brighter."Is a _KUNAI_!" he cried. He quickly withdrew the fork held it in his right wing as the spotlight cast sparkles reflecting everywhere off the magnificent fork.

Sakura and Konohamaru inhaled deeply, they're eyes bright in awe, the kunai reflected in their eyes. They excitedly asked, "What does it do? _What does it do_?!"

"Eh?..." he said, leaning forward and raising a feathered eyebrow.

"_Kakashi-sensei!_" they pleaded. Their bodies went chibi as they kow-towed before him, Konohamaru made it out in an awkward flop. Kakashi smirked.

"Humans use these toys...to straighten their hair out! See—," he twirled the...er, kunai through his silver crest of feathers then slid it out, "just a little twirl here and a yank there and—sugoi! You've got an aesthetically pleasing configuration of hair that humans will absolutely, positively go nuts over! Heck, even the humans in my beuk right here use 'em!"

Sakura chuckled, proud of herself to have found such a wonderful item. "A kunai." she said, confirming the word to memory. Konohamaru pointed his right fin at the item spilt out of the bag.

"And what about that one...Kakashi-sensei?" The bird threw the fork back into the bag and then picked up the pipe.

"Ahh...now _this _I haven't seen in years. This is wonderful! A banded, bulbous...hana."

Sakura and Konohamaru awed an, "Oohhhh."

"Now," Kakashi continued, "the hana dates back to the feudal eras, when humans used to sit around and stare at each other all day. Got very boring really. So, they invented the hana to make fine music. Allow me—." He took the pipe and put it between his beaks and blew hard. A gurgly whistle issued and seaweed popped out at its end. The mermaid's eyes were wide in shock.

"Music? Oh, the concert! Oh, god, my father's going to kill me!" she said, her hands went to her cheeks.

"The concert was today?" her fishy friend asked, he put his fin to his chin and thought it over. Kakashi was still contemplating over the pipe.

"Maybe you could make a little planter out of it or something..." he muttered, paying no attention to the worried bunch before him. She felt bad for having to ditch her teacher but it was necessary before her readied punishment was made any worse. She clenched her fist to her chest and looked away from Kakashi and fidgeted.

"Well, erm, I'm sorry, but I've got to go. Thank you Kakashi-sensei! See you!" she said to him. She and Konohamaru ducked under the water and swam away.

"Yep, anytime dear, anytime..." he said as he waved good bye. With the pipe—erm, hana still whistling in his mouth he flew back up to his perch, only to be dragged swiftly back to the ground by the anchor still connected to his foot. "Owww."

Deep beneath the sea, unbeknownst to the little mermaid and her friends, dwelled an _evil_ force that would soon turn their fairly-content world _up. side. down. _The waters were near black in the depths where this terrible being thrived, sunken ships made abundant, and sickening odors fumed in bubbles from the under-sea geysers. Yamanaka Ino sat cozily in her little cave under the water, watching the glowing bubble set floating over the hollow of a large, dead sea-urchin. Her slimy minions, Chouji and Shikamaru watched the little mermaid and Konohamaru swim away through the depths of their territory and towards the city of Atlantica.

"Yees, hurry home princess. We wouldn't want to miss old daddy's celebration, now would we? Ha! Celebration my ass. Hrmph! In _my _day we had stupendous parties when I lived in the palace!" she cackled to herself. The shadow of the cave cast her purple skinny body to be almost as dark as the cave itself. She reached out her delicate left hand and plucked out a squirming pink shrimp seeming starved for days. Ino brought her hand back into the darkness and popped the shrimp into her mouth and chewed on it like gum.

"And now, look at me...wasted away to practically nothing." she groaned. Ino flipped her purple self over her hollow's edge bent over it like a dirty rag just waiting to be thrown out. Yamanaka then turned over to her belly and held out her soft hands before her: strained in the imagination of crushing someone to death. "Banished and exiled and practically starving while he and his flimsy fish folk celebrate."

She moved her hands to her non-existent stomach and poked her non-existent fat in disgust. Ino flipped her legs over her head and ascended to the sandy floor. Her eight legs carried her towards a wall, preparing to pace. "Well, I'll sure give 'em something to celebrate soon enough!" she muttered. "_Shikamaru__! __Chouji__!_" Ino screamed at her minions. Chouji the puffer-fish and Shikamaru the giant seahorse awoke from their naps born of boredom in great surprise and knocked each other in the head; Chouji puffed. "I want you to keep an extra close watch on this pretty daughter of his. She may just be the key to Jiraiya's undoing...mwahahahahahaa...!" They all smirked and cackled into the distance.

**Well, duh. If Sakura is going to try to win Sasuke's heart wouldn't it only make sense to make Ino her nemesis? And by giant seahorse, Shikamaru is only the size of a half-grown kitty since normal seahorses are kind of puny. A tiny seahorse wouldn't make for a very intimidating person...**


	4. Longing For This One Hope

Several beautiful and curvy merwomen surrounded King Jiraiya with their small starfish bras, laughing as the merman told them some not-very-funny and not-quite-true tales about his past. Rock Lee spotted a mermaid swimming her way towards the chamber and he notified Jiraiya with a light kick in the arm with his right foot. Jiraiya bid goodbye to his female friends and practiced some serious expressions as Sakura steadily got closer. He muttered to himself "Sakura! _…Sakura-chan!_ SAKURA! Sakura…" Each with a different tone of voice. The crab smacked his forehead and shook his head. The girl finally approached them.

"Sakura…I just don't know what's gone into your head, young lady…" he scolded her, or attempted to.

"Dad, I'm sorry! Please forgive me, I just forgot and I—."

"As a result of your careless behavior—," started the king

"And misuse of the power of youth!" Rock Lee, who was sitting just a bit behind Jiraiya's ear, exclaimed.

"All of the facilities—!"

"All of the _festivities_, sire." whispered the turtle. Jiraiya quickly stated,

"All of the festivities were—!" he was cut off once more.

"Absolutely destroyed! They were ruined all because of you!" Rock Lee exploded, "This concert was supposed to be the pinnacle of my distinguishing career! The epitome of musical art exemplifying the power and the beauty of youth! Now, thanks to you, I am the laughing stock of the entire kingdom!"

Timid little Konohamaru gathered some amazing confidence and said, "But, it wasn't her fault! F-first of all, there were these two mer-ninja that were chasing us!" Jiraiya and Rock Lee gave him glares of infuriation. He quickly continued, "But, we got away! It ends up that it was all just a mistake and confusion in their plans! Heh hehhh…_then_ there was this seagull and he showed us this and did that and—" Jiraiya cut off the young fish as he was in the middle of his charades.

"A seagull? What?! Birds don't exist underwat—OH! You went up to the surface again, didn't you?...DIDN'T YOU?!"

"Nothing much happened…" Sakura muttered. She cast her green eyes down, she knew what was coming, _"As usual…"_ she thought.

" How many times must we go through this? You could've been seen by one of those earth-polluting, disgusting, power-hungry, oil spilling HUMANS!" he cried out. At the word 'humans', an audience not visible to Sakura and Konohamaru booed and made yells and cries of disgust and anger. Sakura ignored them.

"Father! They are not disgusting humans!"

"They're dangerous! Do you think I want to see my youngest daughter and her fishy friend caught in a fisher's net or harpooned by one of their…_harpoons?!_"

"Dad, I'm sixteen years old! I'm not a child anymore!"

"_Don't you use that tone with me, young_ _lady!_ As long as you live under my seven oceans, you'll obey my rules!" he thundered. Konohamaru began to count the number of oceans on his fin-fingers.

"But, if you would just listen—."

"NO! Not another word! I am never _ever_ going to hear of you going to the surface again! You got that?!" thundered Jiraiya, his cheeks red and breath smelling of sea-water sake. Sakura turned around slowly; tears on the verge of falling were seen from Rock Lee and Jiraiya's perspective. She then quickly swam away crying with Konohamaru trailing behind. The sea was silent as Jiraiya watched his daughter swim away. The redness in the king's cheeks began to fade and he asked his advisor, "Do you think I was…too hard on her?"

"No, of course not sire! Why, if Sakura was my daughter, I'd show her who's who. None of this 'surface' crap and other nonsense. Yeah, I'd keep her under tight control, just as any parent should of his or her rebellious teenage child!" Jiraiya nodded, his confidence boosted.

"Yeah! You're absolutely right, Lee!" He shook his fist and gave a smirk.

"Of course I am sire."

"Sakura needs constant supervision."

"Constant!"

"Someone to watch over her to keep her out of trouble."

"All the time—."

"And _you _are just the turtle to do it!" Jiraiya exclaimed, pointing a stubby finger Rock Lee.

"How, oh, how do I get myself into these situations? I should be writing symphonies and musical numbers, not following around some hot-headed teenager…" grumbled the green and orange turtle. He was slowly swimming through an area of the ocean only a short while from the palace. It had coral and rock formations jutting out at random in this wide area but time and the flow of the water eventually wore down the formations' edges to make a beautiful area great for playing in by young sea creatures as their mothers wouldn't want them to get hurt on those formerly sharp edges.

Seconds after he had finished speaking, he saw Sakura and Konohamaru swim towards a large boulder. He sneakily trailed after them and saw them slip past a narrow space in between the boulder and it seemed —a cave… that it concealed. He quickly swam towards the cave as quickly as a sea turtle could and managed to get inside in time to see Sakura and Konohamaru speaking to each other. Rock Lee hid behind a few rocks, out of the sight of the mermaid and fish. "What on earth is she doing?" he thought as he closed his gaping jaw; the grotto was round and large enough to hold just a few merpeople and with shelve-like ridges all along the blue-grey, almost silver, walls in the same color.

Some of the ridges were larger and shapelier than others, and yet regardless of the many shelves that the small cavern held, items from the human world were crowding on every one. The grotto's ceiling as non-existent, as it rose higher and higher until finally ending in a small opening, where beyond it was the sea. The sun cast gentle rays into the cavern, giving off a somewhat sad yet peaceful lighting in the area. The sunlight also made the cavern a place of beauty as light reflected from the various items that the light hit

Sakura was lying on her stomach on a large flat rock with an antique candle with to arms set before her as well as a grand wooden jewelry box that had remained polished even after all these years under the water.

"Onee-chan, are you… okay?" gently asked Konohamaru. An expression of utmost concern for his friend was apparent on his face. He was about to pat her on the back, but withdrew when he saw her expression. Sakura would not want him to see her when she wasn't strong. Even if she claimed to dislike it when he referred to her as his sister, one could tell that she enjoyed the acknowledgment and respect given to her. Something that people, most of all her father, often did not give her.

The girl held the fork in her hands and let her fingers feel over its cool body. "If only I could get him to understand," she said, to herself more than the young fish. I just don't see things the way he does. I don't see how a world that makes such wonderful things…could be bad.

"Look at this stuff, isn't it neat? Wouldn't you think my collection's complete?" she set the fork into the center-piece of an ornate candle with three arms. "Wouldn't you think I'm a girl, a girl who has…everything?" She gazed first up to the surface which she could see through the opening of the grotto above, longingly, and then all around her at all of her amazing discoveries.

"Look at this trove, treasures untold, how many wonders can one cavern hold? Looking around here you'd think," she shrugged half-heartedly, "Sure, she's got everything." She swam further up to a ridge of items and shifted her fingers through some jewelry and pieces of tinted glass smoothed by the ocean.

"I've got gadgets and gismos aplenty. I've got whozits and whitesmiths galore," she came up to Konohamaru holding a small chest, "You want thingamabobs?" She opened it to reveal some hooks and fishing-bait, " I got twenty…but who cares?" She closed the box and put it aside, then laid her arms over a faded globe and rested her head on it. Her green eyes stared up longingly to the surface. "I want more…" she swam over to a music box.

"I wanna be where the people are. I wanna see, wanna seem them dancing! Walking around on those…" she hesitated and asked Konohamaru as she spun around the dancers on the music box with her hand, "What do you call 'em?" He moved himself vertically to playfully wag his dark blue tail at her. "Oh," she said, tugging and tickling his fin, "feet."

She began to swim backwards around the cavern,

"Flipping your fins you don't get too far, legs are required for—," she grabbed hold of his fins and simulated dancing, "jumping, dancing…Strolling along down a—what's that word again?" she ceased pretending to walk and thoughtfully put her index finger to her chin, "street!"

She ascended in slow spirals to the opening of the grotto, her eyes ever-so into the distance above. "Up where they walk, up where they run. Up where they stay all day in the sun! Wandering free, wish I could be, part of that world!" she reached out with her right hand and grasped her heart with her left. She was descending to the sandy floor. "What would I give, if I could live out of these waters?" She stretched out her arms as she lay on the ground, "Who would I pay to spend a day warm on the sand?" Her smile faded as she propped up her elbow in the sand and rested her chin on her hand.

"Bet'cha on land they understand," she sat up, "bet they don't reprimand their daughters…Bright young women, sick of swimming', ready to stand…" she swam up and did a few simple twists and flips. "And ready to know what the people know," she sang as she flipped through the pages of a book with Konohamaru, "Ask 'em my questions and get some answers!" She went to a painting with a man gazing at a burning candle. "What's a fire and why does it—what's the word?—burn?" At this word her hands clamped to her chest where her heart was with her eyes closed.

"When's it my turn? Wouldn't I love?" she said, swimming towards the shimmering surface. "Love to explore that shore up above…" she approached the opening and reached her arm and hand through it, grasping nothing but water. "Out of the sea…" she said, her voice quieter and weaker than before, she withdrew her arm and brought it close to her torso. She sighed and seemed to be holding back tears. Sakura began to descend once more. 'Wish I could be…" She alighted onto the smooth rock and laid her scarlet lower body on it. A sad expression took to Konohamaru's face as Sakura continued to gaze up to the surface beyond the cavern. Her pink hair swayed gently in the water, wavering and brushing around her face.

"Part of that world."

* * *

**I sincerely apologize for the major break of sorts that I had taken in posting this chapter. I haven't felt the best in the past few months, and when I was feeling well enough to write, what do you know, I wasn't near a computer that I could peacefully write at without someone bothering me about why the heck was a person my age listening to 'The Little Mermaid' music, and watching videos on it online. Forgive me, but, I don't know if I'll ever finish this fanfic.**

**Oh, and I changed the species of Rock Lee from a crab to a turtle, 'cause... I felt like it.**

***Kow-tows to the people who've returned and bothered to read this* I humbly thank you for nagging me about posting a new chapter, otherwise this wouldn't be here! :3**


End file.
